<nettime> 'We Need To Be Guerrillas'

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<http://www.commondreams.org/views/120500-106.htm>
   
   Published on Tuesday, December 5, 2000 in the Guardian of London
   We Need To Be Guerrillas 
   by Hilary Wainwright
   
   The year 2000 is to be brought to a close by the opening round of the
   auctioning of selected public services to the world's most predatory -
   mainly US - corporations. This process is sanctioned by GATS (the
   General Agreement on Trade in Services), and items that could be on
   offer range from Mexico's telecommunications to Britain's schools. The
   deadline being offered to governments by the World Trade Organisation
   is this month.
   
   GATS is a set of international regulations which will require national
   governments to open up public services to the market. Its aim is to
   remove all internal government controls over service delivery that are
   barriers to trade. In effect, it is the framework for a global
   programme of privatisation. GATS identifies 160 sectors to be subject
   to its rules. They range from hi-tech telecommunications to emptying
   the dustbins. They would make government actions to keep local control
   over these services illegal.
   
   This new machinery of liberalisation comes at a time when profits in
   manufacturing are falling and corporations are hungry for new markets.
   AT&T, Arthur Anderson, the Chase Manhattan bank, IBM, the energy
   company ENRON, accountants Price Waterhouse Cooper and Ernst and Young
   and many others, as democratic as a band of feudal lords, are
   salivating in anticipation.
   
   What power has voting had over this international regime which will,
   in the long run, transform the quality of our lives? None. On the
   other hand, people did originally vote for the services now being
   sold. They still do. David Hartridge, director of the WTO Services
   Division, indicates where power lies: "Without the enormous pressure
   generated by the American financial services sector, particularly
   companies like American Express and Citicorp, there would have been no
   GATS."
   
   There has been no parliamentary debate on Britain's support for GATS.
   The only electoral arena in which it has been raised is the US. Thanks
   to Ralph Nader. The one positive feature of the recent US campaign has
   been a platform for Nader to sound the alarm on how strangled
   democracy has become. The importance of this has sunk under
   recriminations about taking votes from Al Gore. But Nader's campaign
   was especially important because he was able to combine his
   well-deserved reputation for exposing and curbing corporate power with
   the new anti-capitalist energies of those who led the protests in
   Seattle and Prague.
   
   What next? What can be learnt for the green left in Britain in the
   face of corporate dominance? Holding inspiring rallies gives a kick
   start to a movement, but any new counter power has to root its ideas
   and demands in our potentially powerful community and workplace
   organisations: win the trust of black and feminist organisations;
   persuade organisations like the Green party and different socialist
   parties to let go of their exclusive claims to leadership.
   
   In Britain something is stirring in relations between left parties.
   The election of green socialist Penny Kemp as chair of the Green party
   might improve the chances of socialist/green collaboration. In
   Preston, where a New Labour candidate was selected over outstanding
   socialist Valerie Wise, Labour party members talked privately about
   putting principle before party and voting for the Socialist Alliance.
   
   Even the largest far left organisations are beginning to overcome
   their debilitating sectarianism. The Scottish Socialist party built
   its considerable influence through its involvement in resistance to
   the poll tax, water privatisation and motorways cutting through
   working-class estates. The SSP gained more votes than the Lib-Dems in
   the last two byelections for the Scottish parliament and six out of
   the last seven council byelections across Scotland.
   
   Modest cooperative alternatives, ranging from organic food providers
   to local recycling, credit unions and environmental resource centres,
   will not bring about fundamental change on their own; they need allies
   with other kinds of power. One source of alliance is the much
   diminished power of organised workers. On both sides of the Atlantic,
   trade unions have begun to reinvigorate themselves by addressing the
   limitations of their old workplace-based, national structures.
   
   All these initiatives on the independent left are part of the toolkit
   of a nimble, plural, international guerrilla strategy to break the
   corporate grip on democracy.
   
   Hilary Wainwright is editor of Red Pepper. hilary1@manc.org
   
                     © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000
   
                                    ###
   
                                      
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